https://golfclubatlas.com/feature-interview/feature-interview-with-mike-cirba/For over 20 years the Feature Interview section has helped advance the mission of GolfClubAtlas. We have interviewed numerous people who make their living from golf including architects, green keepers and PGA players. We have also featured scores of authors who earn a paltry sum compared to time spent. This month we will start a focus on interviewing individuals who help us better understand the game but receive no financial compensation for their efforts. Their contributions are no less significant and perhaps more vital because their efforts are borne of only a love for the game and intellectual curiosity. Welcome to this month's Feature Interview with Mike Cirba, who certainly needs no introduction to anyone who follows this Discussion Group.
Mike's considered posts over the years speak for themselves as do his well-researched In My Opinion pieces. His love of the sport is palpable and his endeavors give back to the game. The sport is lucky to have Mike and we trace his path, from a self-professed muni-rat in northeastern Pennsylvania to a world-traveler who has experienced the Merion's and Muirfield's among the 1000+ courses he’s visited. He has developed a keen eye in part because he has played such a vast array of courses, from rural farm courses to sophisticated designs that showcase state-of-the-art agronomy.
When not playing, reading or doing research, he has devoted a chunk of his free time to the Friends of Cobb's Creek (which needs Friends because its sign misspells its own name). This is a group of concerned golfers who have spotlighted this special municipal course and are pushing for a thoughtful restoration. If their noble cause is successful, it would be a great gift to the greater Philadelphia area and a beacon for forgotten municipal courses across America.
I relate well to him, in part, because both he and I made our maiden pilgrimages to the UK in the same year (1981). Plus, it was through books and gazing at pictures of great golf holes that we both became hooked on architecture. While Mike is a traditionalist, he freely acknowledges he is a hypocrite when it comes to technology, railing against what it has done to the classic courses while embracing it in his own game. Who can't relate?!
This diagram of the Road Hole and its puzzling angles caught the eye of Mike Cirba at age 15.
One reason I begged Mike to act as guinea pig in this effort to showcase the 'amateur's' contribution to architecture is because he is such a fine writer. That matters for a Feature Interview! In describing Muirfield, he writes,
"The clean, uncluttered landscape, the bunkers that started at ground level went down into what seemed to be shadowy graves; the green that seemed unfurled without pretense from the natural terrain was simply mown shorter." I love it! Sit back and have a read. There is no doubt that his story will strike a chord.
I have had tragically few good ideas in my life, going this route with the Feature Interviews is hopefully an exception. We will post another such one this fall with someone from a different country as we roll through all the great golfing countries, comparing how people got into architecture and contrasting what influenced architecture at given times in different places.
Hope you enjoy the first in a series and we thank Mike for kicking it off in grand style. I think we can all agree with his fervent wish that
'Golf will return to the cities and people will play it in droves. They will turn off and turn away from their insular electronic devices and their imaginary, virtual reality games and run from their offices and fast food joints and breath the fresh air and interact with nature again as only golf can best provide.'
Best,